Rewarding a person or team for the excellent work carried out in a French public or private laboratory, the Atos - Joseph Fourier 2018 Prize is awarded to encourage research and innovation in three key areas for society: the digital simulation, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

On July 5, 2018 three Sorbonne University projects associating researchers and professor-researchers received this award.

Numerical simulation

The Tinker-HP, project is a laureate in the numerical simulation category, by Félix Aviat, Louis Lagardère, Yvon Maday, Jean-Philip Piquemal who are professors and researchers at Sorbonne University and Luc-Henri Jolly (CNRS).

The platform, designed to achieve scientific breakthroughs in the field of molecular simulation, brings together the expertise of a multidisciplinary community at the interfaces of four disciplines: mathematics, chemistry, physics and computer science. This software will organize dynamic molecular simulations using advanced force fields. The project could have an impact on a number of sectors, including health and biology.

Developed at Sorbonne University, the Tinker-HP project received support from the beginning by the Labex CalSimLab managed by the ISCD (Institute of Computational Sciences and Data), the Directorate General of Armament (DGA, NRBC Master's degree) and the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). The project has also had extended collaborations, particularly with members of the Inria Matherials project team at Cermics (ENPC).

Artificial intelligence

The start-up LightOn, co-founded by Igor Carron and Laurent Daudet, won first prize in this category for their optical co-processor, making it possible to accelerate certain AI calculations by consuming less energy than the top graphics processors. This technology was developed with Sylvain Gigan and Florent Krzakala, professors at Sorbonne University and researchers at the Kastler Brossel Laboratory and the statistical physics laboratory respectively.

LightOn technology uses light to encode incoming digital data. The impact has already been analyzed thanks to image and text recognition: optical processors have a power a thousand times greater than standard processors, and while consume a negligible amount of energy.

Quantum calculation

Quantum Safe Security, developed by Ludovic Perret, professor at Sorbonne University and Jean-Charles Faugère, researcher at INRIA, is a laureate in the quantum computation category. Over the past 15 years, this team has been working on cryptographic algorithms, able to withstand future decoding systems based on quantum computing.

The project was developed within the PolSys project team, shared by Sorbonne University, INRIA and CNRS, within LIP6, the computer science laboratory of Sorbonne University.

Thanks to the support of SATT Lutech, the researchers created the PQAT(Postquantum Advanced Technologies) start-up by bringing together research laboratories from Sorbonne University, CNRS, INRIA and the cyber-security and defense industries. PQAT supports companies in their technological transitions by offering quantum safe solutions that are resistant to the attacks of quantum computers.